Improving marine ecological data lifecycle through Open Science Principles

This poster has been presented at the 9th Plenary of Research Data Alliance (RDA), 4-7 April 2017, Barcelona (Spain).

Abstract:
The concept of Open Scientific Data is relatively new for the majority of researchers and only in recent years, through the rise of the Open Science movement, its key role in the scientific practice has been recognised. Sometimes, when publishing results of the research, example data were provided, but very rarely datasets (or portion of) were published. Nevertheless, the publication of datasets within the outcomes of the research itself plays a key role for the application of one of the most important principles of scientific research: reproducibility.

After the Open Data movement success, its framing into the wider Open Science concept and the positions taken by some important scientific and government institutions all around the world, and moreover, following the principles recently addressed to each member state by the European Union, the future of European scientific research is quite clear and all the researchers should incorporate these principles.

In this work, we explore the wide range of possibilities given to the researcher in marine ecology from the Open Science and Open Access principles application and we want to trace a roadmap for the implementation of a scientific data life-cycle protocol following the European Commissions' Horizon 2020 guidelines (European Union, 2016). This project involves marine ecological data collected from 1965 to 2015 on the Gulf of Venice (Italy, Northern Adriatic Sea), one of the sites belonging to the Long Term Ecological Research network LTER-Italy. The data is composed essentially by abiotic and phytoplankton parameters, quite heterogeneous in type (numerically, geographically, structurally and semantically). This scientific data life-cycle protocol is aimed to keep trace, follow and publish data starting from their collection (raw and ancillary data), passing through the harmonization and quality check phase, exploitation for analyses, integration and final release through standard and interoperable web services. The citation of data is also a delicate and complex matter of interest.

In this work we aim to demonstrate that a change of view is possible, from “publishing as soon as possible to sharing and collaborating as soon as possible” (Moedas, 2015).

This work would also become a “pilot project” application on marine ecological data for the RITMARE national flagship project “Italian research for the sea” funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (http://www.ritmare.it/) where it contributes significantly to the development of an ecological observatory in the Northern Adriatic Sea, specifically relying on the research line “Interoperable Infrastructure for the Observation Network and Marine Data” (Fugazza et al., 2014).